It has now been 12 years since Chicken George and his family left their plantation in Virginia and arrived in Henning, Tennessee. The year is 1882 and the era of Reconstruction of the south and substantial progress for the newly-freed slaves, is coming to an end with the implementation of Jim Crow laws throughout the state. George's son Tom Harvey has been asked to travel to Memphis to meet with members of the Colored Republican Party Club, a group of local black politicians who are trying to come up with a new election strategy in light of the changing times. Meanwhile Tom's oldest daughter takes a liking for and wants to marry a young mulatto man, much to Tom's disapproval. The white son of a local attorney and adviser to the railroad eschews his father's profession in favor of poetry and falls in love with a local college-educated black school teacher brought to the town by Tom to open a colored school. However when they marry, he is expelled from his family and their presence in town raises the ire of the townspeople.

Thirteen years have passed in the town of Henning, Tennessee and now in 1896, the town has taken advantage of a burgeoning new industrial age thanks to the expansion of the railroad. Returning home from Kansas City after a decade away teaching, Elizabeth Harvey reunites with her younger sister Cynthia, now grown up, and reconciles with her father. Cynthia has taken an interest in a local railroad gang worker named Will Palmer who returns her affections. But in order to court her properly and gain the approval of her father Tom, Will leaves the railroad and finds a better job at a lumber mill, eventually taking Cynthia to be his wife. His hard work, dedication, loyalty, and financial acumen leads to his surprise promotion to owner and operator of the mill, although it is now saddled with debt. Despite this, he and Cynthia give Tom and Irene their first grandchild. Meanwhile Colonel Warner's son Andy decides to get involved in politics by running against his father to institute a new Democratic Party that plans to disenfranchise blacks of the vote and ensure victory against the Republicans. And now thanks to new restrictive voting laws in the state of Tennessee, Tom is denied the opportunity to vote for the first time since the end of the Civil War.

The year is 1914 and Will and Cynthia Palmer's daughter Bertha heads off to college, eventually meeting and falling in love with a poor but hard-working fellow student named Simon Haley. Meanwhile Jim and Carrie Warner's son has become a doctor but because he is black, he is prevented from treating his own dying white grandfather, Colonel Warner. Bertha returns home from college for break to find the Ku Klux Klan has come to town and Simon returns to his home in Georgia to learn that his share-cropping family can't afford his tuition anymore and his father is ready to put him back to work in the fields. Simon manages to find work as a Pullman porter on the railroads to earn money during the summer, but also attracts a benefactor - a kind journalist who he served on a train route. In 1918, rather than attend graduation, Simon enlists in the army and heads off for war, heeding the words of Dr. W.E.B. Dubois, but leaving behind a stunned and grief-stricken Bertha.

In the exciting conclusion, it is now 1960 in Henning, Tennessee, 10 years after Alex's wife Nan left him, and Alex attends the funeral for his great Aunt Elizabeth. He has finally succeeded in a writing career by publishing free-lance articles including interviews with Minister Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam and George Lincoln Rockwell, head of the American Nazi Party. Alex lands a contract to ghost-write the autobiography of Malcolm X, although Malcolm is assassinated before the book is published. Alex then realizes that he should write a book about his own family and he obsessively researches his origins, alienating his new girlfriend in the process. After identifying the language of the words passed down to him, he manages to get an advance that will allow him to travel to Gambia, West Africa. Once there, he is taken by boat to the Griot for the Kinte clan. After the Griot retells centuries of history, Alex finally hears the name of Kunta Kinte and the story of the drum that lead to his capture into slavery, marking the end of his search for his family's roots.